A new iPhone app will let anyone see the center of the Milky Way galaxy from anywhere in the world.
Galactic Compass, a free app made with ChatGPT, was developed by Matthew Webb and was released on the App Store on February 15. No matter where a person is, the app will point in the direction of the Galactic Center, and the position of Earth in its orbit won’t affect the results.
The Galactic Center shifts as the planet moves through space, and after years of teaching himself how to find it, Webb wanted to create the app to make it easier.
He wrote on his website: “I would end up pointing through the pavement, or down a street, and thinking, ‘huh, that’s where it is.
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“Eventually then I had this picture of myself, and the Earth, and the solar system, and the center of the galaxy which had initially been whirling around me, and now it had flipped, I was turning around it. It was wildly situating.”
When using the app, users simply need to place it on a flat surface and a big green arrow will appear in the direction of the core of the Milky Way, where a supermassive black hole (Sagittarius A*) lives.
The black hole has an estimated mass millions of times greater than the sun in our solar system. The majority of black holes form after massive stars collapse, however, Sgr * has too much mass to have been created from a single star. Scientists believe multiple smaller black holes merged to create the supermassive version.
“Back in 2020, Robin Sloan said that an app can be a home-cooked meal,” Webb added. “Now I’ve cooked a meal that anyone with an iPhone can download. Probably only a couple dozen people will want it, but I want it in my pocket, and I want to share it with my friends, and here we are. And I can’t even cook!”
He used the AI tool from ChatGPT, integrating calculations for finding the Galactic Center through variables such as date and location. Webb asked the AI for instructions on how to build the app, and when he came across issues, he’d ask ChatGPT for answers.
“Galactic Compass is still pretty janky, to be sure,” Webb wrote. “But it ain’t bad for a collaboration between someone who can’t build apps and an AI that is barely a year old.”
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